Snake45

After reading your comment, I took a good look at mine. I see what you're talking about. It is just a little rounder than it probably should be. But it doesn't jump out at me, like certain kits' flat roofs I could name. I wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't mentioned it. And it's certainly not a deal-breaker for me. I've built the Monogram 1/24, and an AMT '72 (basically the same body as the '70), and am finishing up the Revell snapper as well as a Classic Metal Works, and I still think the Revell snapper has the best overall body shape.

I bought several of the Skylarks when they were available because I'm a '66 Skylark nut. I'm planning to do one as a 4WD funny car like the Hurst Hairy Olds or Terrifying Toronado. A Monogram HHO will be the organ donor. I have a pretty much complete set of original annual custom parts left over from the one I built in 1969, so I can do one as an Alexander Bros-type custom. The body's too far gone to go back to factory stock, but I'd like to try to do at least one street freak/pro street type thing out of another one. Big problem with this body is that the wheel openings have a recessed lip around them, which would be very hard to scratchbuild. I might try to take silicone molds off a good stock body (I have one) and clone the wheel openings in place, as someone here recently illustrated. Theoretically, it should be possible.

Absolutely beautiful, and that comes from a guy who's not a huge custom fan. Great concept, expertly executed! Did you say what you used for the grille? It looks a bit like the splatter guard I bought at Walmart last week. I'm hoping that's exactly what it is.

Whatever you do, DO NOT use a black Sharpie for this. It might look nice at first, but over time the Sharpie in will leach out right through the paint. I know, hard to believe, but I've seen it on model airplanes when guys did this on panel lines. Utterly ruined the model and there's no way to fix it short of a complete strip and repaint.

You did great! I'd be proud to have that one on my shelf myself. Model on!

Ratio, what's that? I just poured some Tamiya black in an old Testor bottle, then added alcohol till the stuff was real thin.

I've used whatever flat or matt black is handy, enamel or acrylic, I don't care. I wipe the excess off with rubbing alcohol on a paper towel off while it's still wet, anyway. If your scribing job is good and your paint job is good, very little (if any) of the black will be visible in the finished job anyway. But good to know it's in there if anyone ever takes a REALLY close look.

Very impressive work! But it still doesn't look like they fixed the rear fender tips. (You can easily file/sand them back to shape yourself.)

Nice clean build! Model on!

American Torq-Thrusts. Keystone Klassic Kustomags. Thin Cragars (deep ones are common). Good open steel wheels. And good big and little (especially big) tires to fit them all. Hilborn injection for small block Chevy. The tubes in the AMT '55 Nomad are so long you can cut them into two sets, and use the extras on the tube-less intakes in the Double Dragster. Good headers for almost any V8, though they're a lot more common now than they used to be back in the '60s. Original AMT annual '63-'67 Corvette parts, stock or custom. Especially the hard tops in the '65-'67 roadsters. And I have two of the panel truck tops I have plans for.

I haven't seen one yet where the headlights are back to stock, as on the original kits and promos. They keep making that part worse and worse. I also haven't seen one where they EVER corrected the shape of the rear fender tips from the '64 shape. It's easily enough fixed, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone do so. A decent model can be made from the kit if you fix the rear and can get a resin copy of the original promo headlights and front bumper and maybe fix a few other things. But the only things I ever see anyone gripe about is the rear fender emblems and the seat upholstery. Someday soon I'm gonna have to do one, just to show y'all how it's done.

What he said! Model on!

I've become a big fan of the recent posted glue bomb resurrections done by Sport Suburban. Just to pick one, here's his '70 Javelin.

My old Sand T had tires that looked like that--4 of them. I was given to understand at the time that they were the same tires as the rear tires on their Indy Lotus Ford kit of the day. (When is Round 2 gonna reissue THAT?)

Speaking of Griffons, there were both short-nosed and long-nosed Griffon Spits. The short ones were the MK XII and the Seafire XV and XVII; the long-nose ones were the MK XIV, 18, PR19, and all those thereafter. (I believe they went from Roman to Arabic number with the 18.) The MK XVI was the highest number with the Merlin.

Last week I Snake-fu'ed an AMT prebuilt Dodge Copperhead. It's molded in a beautiful metallic/pearl copper-orange. The original plan was to scribe out the door etc lines as I usually do, but these were the kind that are so wide that I know THAT usually doesn't work out. When I got everything else on it done, I used a flat brown acrylic paint in the panel lines. I'm not 100% happy with how it looks, but of the four possible options--do nothing to the lines, scribe them and make them worse, use black, or do what I did--I think I made the best choice. BTW, I had that paint on hand because I'd bought it specifically to do the door lines on a red-molded 2016 that I did rescribe. Haven't done that yet--when I got done, the scribed out lines looked marginally acceptable, but I knew I did NOT want to run black into them.

I saw the Testor Bug Yellow in cans at Hobby Lobby yesterday. If I were looking for Mayfair Maize and had to use a rattlecan, that's what I'd use (over white primer).

I made my own using Tamiya Acrylic Flat Black and 92% alcohol. I haven't used it much, but when I have, it's worked great.

Great score! I'm envious. I'd have to see it to give suggestions. If I thought I could repair the cracks invisibly, I'd strip it and restore it to as-made. If not, I'd drive on and treat it as a model, painting and detailing it to suit myself. I have a '65 HT promo in red. The body's not damaged, but it does have a lot of scratches and scuffs. I'm gonna try my best to polish them out. The front and rear bumpers are broken. I'm replacing them with units from a common AMT '66. It was missing a seat. I managed to find another seat, but not in red, so I'll be painting the interior. Another promo in my stash is a '68 Barracua with a little "play wear" that would be great except the right A-pillar was broken and glued back, not well, and the glue might have ruined the windshield as well (won't know till I get it apart). Gonna try to replace the A-pillar with one cut from a (warped) '69 body*, and I THINK I can get away with repainting just that A-piller (Testor #4 red). Gonna polish out the rest of the body and leave it stock. Haven't yet decided about painting the interior but I probably will. *Come to think of it, I might even be able to scratchbuild a replacement A-pillar, if I can find some scrap red plastic that's a good color match. Hmmmmm.

Well, except of course for GM's Allison, which by that time had seen use in thousands of P-38s, P-39s, P-40s, and early P-51s....

That type of traction bar was used in several of the AMT first-gen funny cars from 1967. Impossible to say exactly which one that particular one came from, unless there's a difference in the holes that I've never noticed.

On your recommendation, I tried this last night on a glue-bomb AMT '72 body I'm working on. (It's painted and the paint won't come off, so it has to be 100% sanded anyway.) To my amazement, it wasn't really that difficult, and it looks like it might have worked, though I won't know for sure until I get paint or at least primer on, which could be a while. I was even able to save the fender SS emblems, though I might end up sanding those off anyway as they're not really that good. Thanks for the idea!

There used to be a big, simple 1/24 Beaver offered as a sort of promotional item by somebody--might have been a whiskey distiller. I've never seen one in person; I think I've seen one built up in FineScale modeler or someplace. http://www.finescale.com/issues/2012/~/link.aspx?_id=987F7222B6A34212B4A03B706F971D9B&_z=z https://www.ebay.com/itm/Canada-Alaska-DeHavilland-Beaver-Floatplane-Seaplane-1-24-Model-Canadian-Mist-/312080651255 Also, you might want to look at some "flying" models. There's a Guillow's Cessna L-19/O-1 model that just happens to scale out to 1/24. A guy here did a couple really nice builds of it. You might be able to see his pics by "properties" uncoding the photobucket links: http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=64540

I'm pretty sure I saw them at Hobby Lobby yesterday. It's the version with the big goofy wheels/tires, no stock wheels/tires. On this build, I'm using the stock wheels/tires from an AMT. The first version of this kit was stock, and molded in green. I have one of those in the stash. It took me a while of looking for it on eBay. Well, not all THAT long, but it's not like there are three of them on there at any given moment. I'm hoping to build it soon. Need it for my Polished Plastic collection. I don't anticipate it will give me as many problems as this one has.

Well I was able to polish a good deal of the gator-skin cracking out, and today I got the decals on, after all these years. It took two sets of AMT '70 Chevelle decals, as they were both too short and too wide. Job took me 3-4 hours and was as big a headache as any model airplane decal job I've ever done. Couldn't have done it without a google search for the correct size and placement of '70 Chevelle stripes. With a little luck, I might be able to kick this stupid thing through the goalposts tomorrow. Or, at the worst, next weekend.